Wanderlust
by rednightmare
Summary: Janiah Shepard is a Spectre - but Janiah Shepard is also a man. An intensive character study of a slightly psychotic male Shepard. (Includes events from Mass Effect 1-3 and the rare beast that is MShep/Liara.)
1. INTERIM: Blink

_**To New Readers: **_**Welcome! **_**Wanderlust**_** is a Mass Effect 1-3 fic about Janiah Montgomery Shepard: a custom-built, very by-the-rules commando who leans paragon but struggles with moderate psychosis and the constraints of being one human amongst a legion of harder-hitting Spectres. Game history is Earthborn/war hero. Romance will be consistent Liara, but a Liara with some de-Sue alterations. Heavy Kaidan influence, pretty substantial Garrus & Jack presence. Side of Miranda & Kelly. Season with everyone else to taste, serve chilled. Things will mostly adhere to canon (besides the relationships, which have been expanded), but I have made some changes here and there to better fit the dynamics of my Shepard.**

_**To the Readers of Edition 1**_**: All right! Welcome back. You've found **_**Wanderlust**_** again, returned to the public sphere with some tweaks and MAJOR reorganization. Originally, the edits were small and never intended to be a redux, but… considering March isn't THAT far away, I began to worry about where the new game might fit into my old storyline! Hence – while a great deal of content remains (the character concepts of **_**Wanderlust**_** haven't been touched) – a direction change was taken to allow not only for more intimacy, but for more seamless incorporation of ME3 material. I've kept much of the original writing/scenes, you may notice (when I re-add more chapters, at least) – but the presentation has been diced up. Instead of starting far away and gradually painting a mural of Shepard, I'm aiming for a diamond effect – going to tackle several angles simultaneously. Hopefully this new edition will restore whatever you may have enjoyed in the last, but with more room to grow. [Thank you to everyone who reviewed or dropped me a line! Your input was (and still is) appreciated!]**

_**To Everyone**_**: The design will be multi-lateral; **_**Wanderlust**_** is set up to explore J. Shepard by telling several different (not necessarily chronological) stories at once. Each chapter, in addition to the usual title, will be labeled by which overarching plotline/series/thingamajig it belongs to. The reason for this method will be clearer once we're a few chapters in, I promise.**

**Thank you for visiting; I hope you enjoy!**

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><p><strong>WANDERLUST<strong>

_We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite.  
>- Sovereign<em>

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><p><strong>INTERIM: Blink <strong>

Janiah woke up in the shower.

Commander Shepard startled to find himself hunkered forward in a dingy stall of _SSV Normandy_, large hands braced flat against the cool tile, sputtering. His neck was sore from the weight of a lolling head. His fingers were covered in mesh. Icy water clattered the Spectre's armored body – careening in dumb, thick rivulets down Janiah's face and planking against white ceramic plates, droplets shivering off mechanized joints, tributaries seeping into synthetic skin. It dribbled uselessly through the tight steel wool curls of his hair, darkening reddish-brown to a color like dirt, collecting in the suit's neckline. Chlorine stung his open eyes. Close, cubical confines amplified the sound of pattering beads into a steady roar. Steam rolled off him, pauldrons covered in post-mission grime, adrenaline making everything feel too hot. Here, soaking in coolness and fine mist, there was room only enough for breathing.

So the soldier took a breath, disoriented. He swallowed a mouthful of water. His gums were tender – made the oxygen go down with a bloody aftertaste, as though he'd been clenching his teeth.

Shepard pressed his eyelids tight together – a blink so hard, they hurt when he opened them up.

_Recalibrate._

He choked for a moment, shaking off the panic, the military half of his mind forcing this to mean something. Janiah was not sure if he had blacked out or simply nodded off – muscles worn down to their riggings, brain clicking along slowly, overtaxed knees like a collapsible shotgun inside their caps – and decided it did not matter. Shepard could not recall stumbling into the washroom, hazy from running; that _Normandy_'s lights made his lightheaded vision fizz. He couldn't recall how fast her latrine cleared of crewmen; that he'd twisted the spigot as cold as it would run, body burning inside and out, then simply dropped his helmet on the floor and stepped in. He couldn't discount the possibility that this sudden temperature shift had made him faint for a moment, slouching forward to bump his nose into the wall… but he did remember everything else.

He remembered cracking a C-Sec turian's snout with his pistol, then thundering up a docking platform, boots clanging too loudly to hear any following shots. He remembered how Anderson had puffed raggedly three footfalls behind him, how his face glowed red beneath so many safety lights. _"Don't wait,"_ he'd said, hunched over a table in Flux, their meeting as grassroots as it was clandestine. Old liquor stains made their sleeves sticky against steel furniture. _"You don't have time to look back. We – you – can't afford it."_ And so there was no hesitation here in the Citadel holding dock. They had broken into a control post within minutes. No second-guessing, no dragging of feet, no wondering if this sledgehammer course of action was indeed the right one. At the behest of his superior – how it always was for this man – Commander Shepard went from a decorated officer in a Wards pub to a fugitive gunning through hostile space within an hour. It was the brashest, most tactless action he had taken since instatement – the most yellow tape cut – the messiest he had dared to be since Janiah was eighteen years old.

_Still_.

While their efforts were fast and fueled by something like righteousness, they ultimately petered out at the halfway bench. Captain could not unlock _SSV Normandy _before security teams retaliated; he'd punched in a series of bay numbers, nothing his mentee understood, and ducked beneath a console shelf just as bullets began to hit. Thermal shells speckled metal siding. But there were still walls to be breached and a harbor computer to guard – abandoning this last-ditch rush meant lockdown, certainly. Perhaps it meant more than that. Rogue Spectres did not sit in prison cells; Council 'termination' required firing squads, not discharge hearings. Warfare demanded casualties, in battlefields and boardrooms; someone would have to stay.

Anderson shouted "just go," so Shepard just went.

Wooziness descended immediately when he stepped out into the deserted locker room. Janiah staggered briefly; there was fog sifting off gauntlet creases and greave textiles, chassis no longer warm to the touch, and he struggled to adjust to frigid water followed by a blast of treated, sterile air. His armored form in this cramped corridor made Shepard look like a titan bolted-down. Mirrors and reflective steel trapped him. Grim overhead lighting hit modified N7 pieces and glinted like sunglare – brackish, blood-red paint striped down colorless plates; grey low tones; black underweave – the camouflage of space stations and concrete. The contrast was alarming against an olive complexion. It reflected off the pale bronze contours of his face in extraterrestrial angles, defining lines that looked to be a mixture of North African and Scandinavia.

He ignored the puddles collecting below both boots; he paid no mind to the _squish_ of wet soles packed-in between his snugly insulated toes. Instead, the commander inhaled deeply. This air was too clean and it seared his nostrils, smelled like chemicals and cleaning liquid. The marine's irises were wormed with red, glacier-blue and blinking numbly. They normally sliced through space like a precision laser. They looked confused.

He knew how to be a very good Alliance XO, but Anderson had told him to be a Spectre; he became one.

Commander Shepard possessed what one might call a reserved appeal – civil, but by no means intimate. In personality he was remote – accessible at face-value, though beyond the reach of anything but mission prerogatives, formalities or textbook diplomacy. Physically he was clean-cut, almost laboriously so: smooth-shaven down to carrara, no errant hairs, no unruly sideburns, no distinguishing tattoos or brands or piercings. The man's cheekbones were Achillean; jaw uncomfortably taut (the nervous bite of a teeth-grinder); few expressions moved square, Arabian lips. No excess words – _none_ – no off-color jokes, no sailor's mouth, no emotional speeches or spitfire wisecracks. Spartan utilitarianism defined him. In uniform or body armor, the Spectre was insistent upon presenting himself as a kept and tempered individual, body and mind about as supple as a brick wall. His wingspan was broad, eyes narrow, and the Ethiopian geometrics of his face locked in at stoic. It provoked a sort of regimen charisma.

Which was fortunate, because Janiah Montgomery Shepard had very little charm, and _regimen_ was a fine mask for illness.

Until now, perhaps. Until thirty minutes and so many light-years ago, when they – _The_ _Normandy_ – had run far – leaving a history of quiet service, clean medal cases and certainty for a great expanse of black nothing.

He had done everything

every thing

_everything_ they had asked of him. He had done it smartly, efficiently, discreetly and took each step by-the-book. He had done it by the book because strict codes helped to make sense of all this nonsense in life; rules divvied and filed the disorder. He had done it because it was easy to be exemplary when _standard_ came in a manual. And he had done so because there was no other option for someone like him.

He had researched it once on the extranet, three or four years ago – what "someone like him" might have meant in medical language. The study had been brief and ultimately purposeless. Grown well into his Navy badges by now, Janiah did not want anyone tracing his search history and discovering suspicion information hunts, downloaded psychology journals, a data chip full of reading material on brain trauma and failed genetics. It was too great a risk with too little output. Checking the possible source of his symptoms was sketchy, inconclusive, and led unfailingly to the one verdict Janiah did not want. Knowing would have made no difference.

_"__..: a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought (as in delusions), perception (as in hallucinations), and behav—__"_

He had closed the document, stopped investigating, and that was that. Knowing solved nothing – and diagnosis meant a hushed dismissal, a life lived stupid on medication paid for by VA stipends, and the rank stripes ripped from his sleeves.

That could not happen.

Janiah filled his lungs with vented air, held it, then expelled the rawhide scent of Alliance starship: motors, rifle-oil, plastic and boot-black. He pressed one gungrip-worn glove against the wall and dragged it along, watching dewdrops slither down the alloy. He could see one swollen knuckle bulge beneath webbing; it had hit the turian's stiff, unyielding cheek, and popped out of place as neatly as a hole-punch. Socket and ligaments clicked loudly. The blow had probably hurt him more than it had that off-guard platform watchman. This truth filled him with frustration and no small amount of animosity; Shepard faced the fact he wore a title meant for peoples with telekinesis, powerful optics, exoskeletons, claws.

There was no book on how to be a Spectre when one sloppy shot was all it took to end you.

He hated being human. That this new Spectre loathed the weakness of his body was obvious in every pulled calf muscle that caught painfully in his legs; each hairline fracture, broken rib, bruised tibia; those twinges of tension that ricocheted over his jowl. The spongy spots of their species were vulnerabilities this strange operative, adhered to crisp successes and premeditated maneuvers, could not abide. His resentment was palpable each time his unshelled body failed him. When Dr. Chakwas would pull shut stitches in thin Earth-child skin, Janiah bristled. The watery scarlet of Commander's own blood infuriated him. Perhaps in this soberness and constant militarism was a fervent desire to evolve – to deny his heritage, a destructive metamorphosis meant to fulfill every quality the Council expected from their finest agents. Shepard was not born turian – but though his flesh was soft and limber, hands clad in nails instead of talons – he would do his best to become one. Humanity had not done him enough kindnesses to regret the change.

A Spectre, Nihlus said, was less like a saw and more like a very sharp scalpel.

"Ilos ASAP. No delays," Commander ordered the second they'd cleared Citadel station's relay, one hand crunching Joker's seat back, C-Sec scattershot still stuck in a shin casing, burning beneath his armor.

And then he had ended up here.

Janiah's life had been one of meticulous shots, readjustments and careful timing. He did not spray ammunition and bludgeon down storm doors. Likewise, he had never been a cackling madman, hysterical and spouting sentence strings that made no sense; he was not laughably paranoid, catatonic, incompetent or completely unable to verbalize. He was not criminally insane, waving knives about, and he was not chattering with phobias or unprovoked violence. And yet there was undeniable wrongness there, as precise as high-caliber slugs, germinating somewhere within his mind – a malignant dark splotch that warped things, made ignoring the monstrous non-realities difficult. It dug in with a dozen small bites. There was his utter aversion to extraneous speech or behavior. There was the low, blunted, well-enunciated monotone devoid of influx. There was the blank, soulless thousand-yard stare that shuffled recruits to obscure shifts, posts and routes that would avoid contact with their commander. The Spectre's primary emotional outlets were the faded scrapes, twin diagonals in the shape of batarian claws, that traced the ridge of his upper right cheek; they occasionally twitched towards a frown or smile. He was prone to insomnia and respiratory infections; he felt stress implosively, liked the cyclical hum of starship ventilators more than music and preferred calm quiet to noise. But there was little else, and these off-color facets of his personality were not permitted to jeopardize him. Shepard hid his mental static and black holes well, because while he may not have been a prized ambassador, he _was_ a soldier – and that was one of the few anchors he had found in twenty-eight years of life.

No, Janiah Montgomery Shepard was not a basket-case, howling at the moon and self-deluded. He knew perfectly well what he was.

Now, at any rate. Shepard hadn't been quite sure what to do when he first stepped aboard David Anderson's compliment, carrying his _Volkov_ rifle in both hands – a young man who could muster no momentum without direction. The captain told him a gun was nothing sans a moral compass; he developed one that fit. He battened himself in like a thumbtack. He listened.

In the years that followed, Janiah Montgomery Shepard took these raw tools and these specific instructions and made himself into an excellent soldier. Shepard was unshakable. Shepard's bark was like a machete whack, curt and serrated. Shepard always did the math. Shepard negotiated terrorist space and did not flinch at pistol-point. Shepard's eyes were the lovechild of an iceberg and a skinning knife; and somewhere beneath all the protective sheeting, inadequate flesh and sinew, his pulse beat a metronome pace – there was no anxious veteran's heart to make him short of breath.

There was no manual, no captain, no compass waiting in the Pangaea Expanse.

"_What the hell are we supposed to do now?"_ Kaidan had asked him outside the Council chambers that morning, before they'd gone to meet with Captain – voice hushed, devoid of bravado, brown eyes equine and worried.

Shepard could never remember being so mortified by a question in his life.

Janiah hit his fingertips to edge of a dull hanging mirror. He stopped. Standing in this bathroom alone, dripping, helmet inanimate in a corner, it occurred to the Spectre that he did not know where to go from here. Outside that door there were no more dotted lines. There was only a massive openness, the empty no-boundaries breadth of space, infinite possibility with no maps. He breathed in. He blinked. He heard, on the fringes of consciousness – like rainwater tapping down his back – a familiar, discomfiting static, and the Spectre suddenly knew that if he thought about _nothingness_ any longer, he would be sick.

Even for him, not thinking was the impossible order.

Being a great soldier is not the same thing as being a great commander. As a soldier, you cope with killing in intervals, training sessions; you master yourself through following orders, each rank granting new clearance and new responsibilities handed down the file. Officers distinctions bring trust and more assurance; awards signify adherence to expectations well-plied. Life for a soldier is cut very clear. You learn to live in strict, measured, predictable steps.

You learn to lead in leaps.

Shepard's knees hit the floor with one harsh _'clang!'_ as he bent over the nearest toilet bowl and vomited until the water clouded red.

He had made their course of action plain. Those pale sands of Virmire were distant history, one eager private sacrificed for one staff lieutenant and the safe detonation of a bomb. They had blasted those beaches to sulfur and glass; seared Saren off the planet's face, facility reduced to rubble and then ash, bloodstains scoured by scorch marks. They left it spotless, immaculate. Flawless infiltration. Flawless beach. The Breaker Vs in SR-1's downstairs armory were clean, motionless, well-greased; they wore no fingerprints of the dead. _The_ _Normandy_'s escape from Citadel deadlock had, all things considered, been fairly clean. All black marks until this point had been purely metaphorical.

Shepard spit, blinked, wiped his chin.

Things were about to get very messy.

Janiah rose. He coughed, splashed his face in a sink, swished Listerine. Water trickled from the dents and crags of his armor. The Spectre didn't notice it.

He avoided the foggy mirror – paced a bit because he had no idea where else to be – then finally, still sopping, picked up his helm and left the lavatory.

Shepard was thoroughly clean, but he left a trail of wet footprints and very human fear.

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><p><em><strong>AFTERTHOUGHT<strong>_**: Just to clarify the format for future chapters, this installment is from series "Interim." Definition taken from the medical subset of **_**Merriam-Webster**_**. Thanks for reading! (Or… rereading.) **


	2. DYSPHORIA: Patchwork

_**Author's Note**_**: Thanks, Redbeard! It's good to be back. And much obliged for your input on edition one from before – it's been great to have your support. Thanks to HellzCrusader, too (I also love reading introspective Shepard; mostly because Shepard can be so varied, depending on who you ask)! Also thanks to everyone for the (re) favs/(re) alerts/etc.**

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><p><strong>DYSPHORIA: Patchwork<strong>

His first memory is of looking up.

Janiah cannot be sure how old he is at the time – metal file cabinet icy against the backs of his calves, shinbones stinging beneath sweatpants that are bunched up over both kneecaps. The Spectre does not recall if that yellow light he squinted into was a ceiling fixture or an overhead window to the gritty Manhattan August. What is more, Commander remembers nothing said outside that cramped storage closet, because the industrial whirs and automated thunks of _processing_ are too loud; human voices are overpowered by a warehouse full of factory equipment, so they do not even try. But it is a stone's throw quieter shut in here. His eyelids wrinkle, mouth thinned and stubborn in its attempts to be a man – the sinkholes that punctuate his cheeks are not from children's smiles, but dimples in preparation for pain.

He is maybe five or six, Shepard thinks. He sucks air when the peroxide hits his bloodied knees.

Janiah can't recall exactly how he sustained this injury – a clumsy fall, perhaps, running too fast at a game he'd been told not to play here; maybe a shoelace caught in the precarious wool-spinner; maybe a bump against overheated steel cylinders. A boy should not be scampering around smokestack technology and power tools, but there is nowhere else for him to go, and he is too small to be left alone. The synthetic, new-fabric smell of coat textiles, cured leather and burnt stitches used to make him nauseous; he's since grown inured to it. VI interfaces, regulating the stamping of buttons and lapel measurements, used to frighten young Shepard; he's since accepted that the shuttering eyes and shrill, high-pitched beeps are harmless. Clothing manufacturing is very self-sufficient when done by machine. They chug this drab concrete building along at a fair pace beneath the shoulders of commercial skyscrapers and air taxis – they need human contact only for oversight, and even then, only as padding for consumer legalities.

The antiseptic was lukewarm, but tickled as it ran down his ankles, dampening Shepard's socks. He glanced down as she looked up.

_Mother_: brown skin, black curls, Havana-blue eyes that could not forbear all of her son's mishaps.

Claire Harper Shepard's expression is critical; she dabs at his scrapes with a tissue, stained watery pink. Her face is sharp and focused in the way of surgeons – no blinking; shallow tension-lines carved around full mouth corners; raven tendrils sticking to sweat, eking beneath a worn-out work bandana. Angular cheekbones, rounded chin. Look of concern beneath her authority. The bottle of disinfectant has been upturned liberally over her son's legs, and is now clicked back into its first-aid kit, sloshing at half-empty. His injury is fizzing out dirt. She tries to blow it dry, an inexperienced parent with more technical skill than wisdom – the short puff fails as a real analgesic, but distracts the pain. Her fingertips are firm and care-giving; good intentions struggle to make up for the time, income, and safety they lacked. But repairing faulty motherboards and snapped spool-churners was easier than keeping the skinned knees off a child.

"Did you learn your lesson?" she asks, cycling seam-cleaners making her shout. The stained Kleenex are crumpled and stuck in a grey pocket of her coveralls.

Janiah does not nod or mumble 'yes,' but wipes the wetness out of his ducts before it can fall as tears. He is small and intensive in the way that children are. Ears jut out from a closely-shaven head. Hands grow too fast for his mittens; life teaches too quickly for his innocence to catch up.

Shepard's heart is disproportionate to his size; his awareness is mismatched with his age.

Their life in New York was one of compromise and joy postponed. Janiah gritted down and endured the unfriendly bite of grown-person medicine; Mother worked six afternoon shifts per week as a mechanical supervisor for Staten Island's branch of _Akuze Winterwear_. It was an inglorious, high-experience, low-wage job. Their hardware broke down regularly, throwing screws or loosening from wall fixtures; Claire's position existed only because some corporate financier felt it was more economical to keep repair-service walking these decks than call out for every glitch. Her shifts were awkward, loud and lonely. And, because he had nowhere else to go – young Shepard went with her. His mother would suture rusted palladium and replace caps spat-out by leaky valves; meanwhile, the boy would stick his nose inside shirt collars and ignore all this rubbery smog, teeth grinding away at every whistle timer. But they acclimated. He learned to stay far enough from the automatic press to keep his ear drums from ringing for hours afterwards; she packed dry snacks made of generic cereal, peanuts and chocolate bits. It was all right, usually. This facility was a large square jungle gym of tubing, dark nooks and amusingly slick tile; there were plenty of opportunities for horseplay. He could kick off his tennis shoes and slide down manufacturing rows without bumping into the other two daily overseers. Hanger shelves were fine hideouts for playing STG spy, pretending Mama was a vorcha terror captain (though she wasn't fond of that game). Junk fabric and L-pipes made excellent forts. You even stopped hearing the racket, eventually; he took naps on down bags and rolls of unused cashmere. The arrangements could have been much worse.

But sometimes Janiah did wish he was with other children, instead.

Sumac leaves were browning with heat that time of year, asphalt baking, sunlight lancing hard off city glass. It is brutal outside. He should probably be in class, all things considered, and will enroll late in kindergarten somewhere uptown next September. Claire cannot really afford to send him to an accelerated program – but does, both because they will give him something better to do than linger around assembly lines, and because he will be safer there than anywhere else she can provide. Between tuition, groceries, rent and his sick aunt, it will rack her checkbook – decimate most other expenses. But she does what she can, and what she feels she must. Life comes rationed off the grid.

"I know it's not exactly fun to be here," Claire went on, picking a flat square of bandage out of the toolbox at her side. Mother is frowning, pant legs covered in floor dust. She rips the gauze in half, smears ointment out of a tube, and presses one skinny strip along each of his tibias. The dark, swollen semi-circles cupping her cheekbones are brought by stress and premature. "I'm sorry I have to bring you. But that's just the way it goes sometimes. Now, you know I'm right here. You also know I've got a lot to pay attention to; I don't have eyes in the back of my head to keep you from getting in trouble all the time. So you're going to have to help me watch you. You understand? You're just going to have to be your own adult for a few hours and know better. I'm sorry," she says again, forcefully, lips held tightly around front teeth slightly too large for her mouth. "But this is how it has to be for now."

The pads are already slipping askew. Claire rummages around for something to hold them in place with – spare twine, elastic – anything but wire, which nicks and pokes. Janiah sits with his hands balled up in the slack of a loose t-shirt. It is bright, playground red. It has a cartoon krogan emblazoned on the cover, spraying bullets from a jetpack. He can't recall the show's name now – some stupid afterschool action-flick, starring a politically incorrect but insistently multicultural team of criminal-hunting C-Sec heroes – but remembers the shirt, worn once-a-week. It must have been a Monday. Mother was very technical-minded; she needed a schedule for most facets of life, and he needed routine.

He sticks one finger through a hole, roundabout where the battlemaster's left eye should be, and waits; guilt has given him patience. Claire picks one rusted hand-wrench out of her way and tosses it onto the floor with a numb clang. "Dammit. You think they'd have some kind of… Hold these." She gestures. "Right here."

Janiah places his hands on lopsided dressing while his mother reaches back to tug the handkerchief from her hair, spilling ink down the collar of company suit. It was still long back then. That he remembers enduringly.

"You're moving around too much. Sit still," she instructs him with the love and frustrations of a young mother. Claire fiddles with her omni-tool, depowering it, then rolls both sleeves up and pulls a box-cutter from a breast pocket. Shepard attentively watches his mother strategically slice and tear the bandana into two stringy bandages; he's mostly forgotten about the hurt. "OK. I'm just… Jan, you're going to kick me in the face! Stop swinging your legs. Sit up right." She catches the bouncing sneaker in one hand and straightens it out. Her fingers are long and calloused white from scalding engines and motor grease.

"Yes, Mama."

There had never been any mention of a father. Janiah asked once, cross-legged at the kitchen table with a chewed orange marker cap in his mouth. He was not jilted or yearning – not seeking to caulk up some strange, lingering gap in their life – merely curious. Claire looked at him sidelong, pursed her lips, and said only: _"What, you sick of me already?"_

"_No, Mama."_

Satisfied, she hadn't given an answer or an excuse. She demanded a hug and made him a comfortingly bland sandwich from grilled lunchmeat and mild American cheese. That had been that.

There are two frayed cloth lengths in Mother's hands. She loops them snugly around Shepard's shins and winds tight knots, anchoring bandages down. The results are sloppy. Strands dangle and gauze tufts stick awkwardly through crosshatching; Janiah feels embarrassment, a blunt childhood shame that is superseded by security. Claire wrestles the pant legs back over his cuts.

"There," she declares, and packs the kit away. Medicine rattles beside nuts and nails. "Be careful. You'll hold together until we get home. Won't you?"

"Mm-hm."

"What was that?" The promise she's waiting for is clear.

"Yes, Mama," Shepard says, and though it stings and it's ugly, she kisses his knees, his nose, his hands.

It is not pretty patchwork, and it will not last, but it is protected enough for now.

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><p><strong>AFTERTHOUGHT: Can you imagine a krogan blasting around Zakera Ward with a jetpack? In Citadel blues? Nope… I wouldn't want to, either.<strong>

**For easy future reference (and to cement **_**Wanderlust**_**'s new layout), this is series "Dysphoria," and will center on exploring flashbacks of Shepard's personal history (childhood and young adulthood). **


	3. INTERIM: Needlepins

**_Author's Note_: ME3 is out, and now – as promised – _Wanderlust_ (re)upload continues! I haven't had much time to write lately, so I figured the least I could do was proof and post some already finished bits. Maybe Jan Shep and crew will get me in the swing again and through my very on-again-off-again DA binge. **

**Thanks to those who reviewed, now oh-so-long-ago! Most of the old chapters will return; they'll just be a little more spread out due to the new format (and hopefully will have less typos ;D). But while the dynamics of _Wanderlust_ will adhere to canon plot, it is not intended to be a game rehashing; the emphasis here is a character study as opposed to the adventure/horror/psych-thriller vein. (This is certainly not to disparage the efforts of anyone who is working on a full-coverage story, however. Re-spinning the entire breadth of gameplay from 1-3 is just too daunting a project for me to take up.)**

**The whole story won't follow the _INTERIM/something else/INTERIM/something else_ format, but hopefully this start will help to establish the new organization style. **

**Enjoy!**

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><p><strong>INTERIM: Needlepins <strong>

All sickbays are the same.

Shepard knows this is not technically true – for some sickbays are far more advanced than others, and some could hardly be called "bays" at all – but he cannot shake the telltale dizziness away. Morphine, gauze, cotton, liniment tubes, bio-adhesive, pills in ever color of the rainbow. Clinks and cycles of air systems; tinking metal, forceps or syringes. Monitors that beep. Citrus chemical to scour out the tart copper scent of humanness. Water that tastes like the paper cups it comes in. A strange, iodine tint to the air… something between mint, fabric, benzene. He cannot quite pin it, but he recognizes it instantly. The atmosphere is familiar. It sticks to the insides of his mind.

Janiah Shepard hates sickbays. When he opened his eyes in SR-1's empty medical office – armor still dripping from the frigid shower he'd stumbled into fifteen minutes prior – Dr. Chakwas was standing over him, datapad in hand, intelligent face replacing the place where the last blank spot in his vision had opened up.

"Did you just lose consciousness, Commander?" she asked, arched, displeased tone more accusatory than it was sympathetic. A smoggy green gaze narrowed at him, lid creases deepening beneath fringes of grey. There was no appropriate response to that question; Janiah could hear from the stitch in her voice that SR-1's resident physician, willow-thin and birch switch-sharp, would scold whatever he might have said. So the Commander sat up without an answer and dark particles still dancing in his eyesight. It was a heaving motion; bleached white armor crowded this examination table, irritating the physician for its size and ineffectiveness. His boots dangled, heavy soles pulling on calves. His hands – at rest upon both pant knees – seemed far away**.** The plastic over hers felt cold.

She admonished with silence and the sternness of her stare for another moment; Chakwas then unclicked the bracer latches from his right forearm, dropped them aside, and stuck an IV needle into that bold vein.

"This is only to rehydrate you," _Normandy_'s doctor explained needlessly. It was a common post-mission routine – even when the mission, such as sprinting down the locked Citadel dockyard today, proved anything but. Her motions were curt and cool in this period of uncertainty. Stress did not shake Karin's bony, punitive, caring hands as they removed a silvery pouch from the overhead medicine cabinet nearby. Her short nails tore it open. "Let's get that shoulder out so I can apply gel to the skid burns. There are light analgesics included for the pain, of course. You ought to feel better once it's cleaned and bandaged properly, so-"

Shepard pulled the pauldron off his injured arm. There was no foresight, no sense to the action – his eyes, their unsettling shade of indicolite, were stunned and dilated. The sound and suddenness startled Dr. Chakwas. It had come away more quickly than expected, revealing a sweating pink scorch blotch right upon the deltoid, taking skin with ceramic. He was too unfocused to care. Aftershock made Janiah inured to the aggression of that act; deaf to the loud wincing _pop!_ clasps gave; unwitting towards how foolish it had been. The armor piece sat dumbly in one large hand. Red N7 stripe on colorless paint – urban camouflage, grey tones built for a metallic age. He could see ripped insulation and his own flesh stuck to the cup.

"_Shepard_," the surgeon uttered – unable to decide this time if it was chiding or concerned. She took the pauldron away from him and dropped it in an empty emergency sink.

His knuckles blanched around the table as she placed ointment, dressing, tape. Water rivulets wound their way through the cracks and crevices of combat suit to plink in puddles beneath his toes.

"Were you hit anywhere else?" Chakwas asked when she was done. A head shake would have to satisfy. The Spectre always carried a distant look in his stare, blue that saw farther than he could say – but there was a glazed quality to it now that worried her. A question that would normally be accompanied by much skepticism accepted his gesture as truth. Commander was always dire, always intense in a way that unsettled; he had been remote, habitual and utilitarian since David Anderson first welcomed him aboard _SSV Normandy_ so many months ago. But there was a lost quality about him at present that spoke more than any _yes_ or _no_ could.

Karin could imagine why. She would not permit herself to think much on the captain, or what became of ad-hoc traitors beneath the Earth Embassy flag. Not right now. Not when there was so much left to be done.

"Say something," Dr. Chakwas ordered before the frog could itch in her throat. She stood before Janiah Shepard with soles militant black and fists pinned upon narrow hips. They hurt with twenty years of triage, standing, gravity fluctuations, and fears for too many lost souls. Her eyelids felt like tissue paper. Her stance, haggard and spindly though it was, remained as militant as his. "I want to be sure your ear drums are all right. Sometimes the energy discharge-"

"They're fine," he said. The Spectre's dead voice echoed in this sterile, empty infirmary.

"Would you like a sedative?"

Commander blinked, but did not turn to look at her. He sat perched heavily upon the table edge, palm heels pressed into stainless steel, not seeing so much as boring forward. "No."

The medic pursed. "Do you need one?"

"I don't," he assured her. Karin had her doubts about this – Shepard's palpable stress tension made him a poorer sleeper than Lieutenant Alenko two weeks off his migraine meds – but left them unvoiced. She did not want to argue right now. Cruel as it might've seemed, she was relieved Janiah was here; his mild injuries meant focused work, a distraction from the reality of what Ilos may soon deliver upon them all, that she would not suffer these last lingering hours alone.

They waited quietly for a moment while she disposed of the supply wrappings and he dripped.

"Here," she instructed. Chakwas filled a polystyrene cup with fresh tap and brought it to the Spectre. He obediently drank; the liquid was bitterly, refreshingly cold. It tasted like nothingness. "You may as well take these, too. For the nausea," Karin clarified when he afforded the three yellow capsules she'd passed with a distrustful look. They clicked the backs of his teeth all the way down. He did not ask how she knew.

With no more procedures to perform – waiting on the IV drip – Dr. Chakwas sat next to Commander, propped beside him against the frigid metal fixture. Her shoulders sagged. Gaunt arms crossed beneath their two-toned, gleaning lab coat. She could hear the persistent stretch of armor hinges over Janiah's breath, metronomic and measured, appreciating how he made no attempts to fill the silence. Once you shed the awkwardness of what most people expect, there was very little required to coexist with this man. Being with Shepard was painfully simple. You need not chatter or compliment or exchange polite niceties. You just _were_. The beeps and scan blips of SR-1's infirmary provided all the background they needed; joining him in quietness of staring nowhere was oddly relaxing. It felt like setting down an immense weight.

She thought about imparting some meaningful advice – considered pulling up a brisk, bracing anecdote for the uncertainties to come – but did not. Dr. Chakwas said nothing for quite some time. She paused in the echoes and faint aloe glow of this sick bay, smelling burn serum and medical paste, and merely existed.

Then, on a weary exhale of breath: "It's felt like a long war, hasn't it?"

"There's still a lot more to do." It seems obvious now, to her – to all of them – how prophetic this statement was, but at the time, Shepard couldn't have known. Uncanny how many turns that could be said of; remarkable how in the far-off end to come, it had not mattered.

She could remember meeting Janiah Montgomery Shepard, an XO imported for and by Captain Anderson – how grave, professional and somehow reassuring his somber presence had been, uniform neat black, stepping aboard _SSV Normandy_ for the first time. He had been severe and polite. And he had worn the crimson N7 stripe on that same shoulder, even then, before the machinations of a Council and their own ambitious species had brought about any of this. There had been something about this officer that was solitary and defining, an outstanding quality to the discipline, a catalyst contained within the discord between scarlet print and zinc. You could not translate it then. These were the marks of a man who would one day become great.

"True," the medic concurred. "And it seems there always is."

She took his drained cup away and walked across the room, stooping to rummage through filing drawers. Karin searched for a moment. Papers crinkled, datapads shuffled, and several tourniquet kits rattled about before she found her quarry and closed the cupboard. With a nagging pinch of age in her back, Dr. Chakwas stood up, one clear liquor bottle in hand.

She popped it, poured a generous douse into the soldier's cup, and returned to him.

"Illium juniper," Karin mentioned. Commander sipped cautiously. As he did so, she resumed her spot, held up the gin, and – without looking – clicked glass against flimsy Styrofoam.

They drank in and within the quiet lull of _Normandy_.

Shepard closed his eyes for a moment. He paused, recentered, and gave a deep, closed-mouth, innermost-air pocket sigh. It was as though he'd been holding that breath for an age. She would hear this same sound from him twice more in their brief time together – moments that embodied purpose, impossible science, and, however much he would have hated it: humanness made flesh. There was something in the way his mouth slackened when the carbon touched it; the way years and experience flicked at those small faded Elysium scars. It was a fragile hope to place in the fragile chance of a single body. The finiteness of Shepard was powerful. Shepard – who did what a marine should do, spoke how a Spectre should speak, who was who he ought to be. He would become a metaphor for expectations so large that no two shoulders could carry then. The hope of eleven billion would break every bone in his back.

But you could be sure that Shepard will carry it as far as he can. Shepard would not take a shot he could not hit. Shepard did not miss. Shepard's attention was like a targeting sight and his pupils trained themselves automatically towards the kill-zone just above your nose. It was a grim and unsettling reflex. There was conditioning and necessity in that bleak routine.

In SR-1's sick bay, Dr. Chakwas leant over, sinuses pleasantly provoked by the gin, and deftly removed the needle from their commander's vein. It did not surprise so much as wake him up. You learned to sleep in intervals of seconds aboard _The Normandy_. You adapted to life in the interim.

"That will be sufficient, Commander," she decided. "I suppose you'll want to retire to your quarters and see if you can't rest before we reach our destination." With that, the spent medical supplies were balled up with practiced fingers, and bounced away into trash processing chute. Her toss was curt, adept; the feminine lines of Karin's arm were negated by her brusqueness of motion.

Perhaps routine had come to mold them all.

Chakwas placed her gin bottle on the examining table and tilted a narrow chin towards Shepard – more specifically, to the armor still encasing him. A missing shoulder piece made the Spectre look lopsided. His elbows hunkered to both kneecaps. They made scraping sounds. "Did you want help getting out of that?"

"I'll be fine," he said, but she reached over and clicked the topmost buckle of his suit neck undone anyway – that one tooth, perfectly between the shoulder blades, that he could never reach. There were limits to what a human body could accomplish… some of them as pitiably mundane as this. It was a grounding observation floating in the black magnitude of space.

"At your leave, then. I'll… soap this for you." She took his cup, using it to gesture sloppily to the sink where that battered pauldron still rocked gently against a drain. "Or something."

He allowed himself a last fatigued blink. There was something strange going on behind the lids, you could sense – details not to be shared. A Spectre's existence is one of secrets and knowledge too terrible to be spread. A Spectre does not let visitors in, and as this surgeon is sure, it is as much for their protection as it is his. There was insidiousness to Shepard's perfection, his meticulousness of aim and appearance – rigor that paved over doubts. Routineness and regimen were his security fields. With the footstool of official sanction suddenly kicked out from beneath him, could he cope? Focus was the standard by which the commander lived his life, thousands of days done through rifle sights and decisive action. Being adrift was something new for them both. You could see the tension, the way his muscle structure never quite settled upon ligaments and tendons, how darkness encroached upon the militant clarity of a young man's eyes.

Nevertheless. Nevertheless, you saw Janiah Shepard operate, and you'd wonder if he felt it the same way. Perhaps fortitude came from a missing connection somewhere in his DNA; perhaps it was nature, groomed or born. And maybe the perceived differences did not matter at all. His heartbeat was slow, rhythmic – but there was intensity there, a mute, metronome panic that grew like a war drum. You anticipated he would buckle and snap. But he never did. Shepard pushed on, internalized it, suffocated the anxieties and unnamed traumas. Or maybe he simply inhaled clean, stale air, and breathed it all out.

One way or another, they all had to persevere.

With nothing else to say and no other wounds to patch, the Spectre stood, and stillness became the thump of heavy plates again. _Normandy_'s medic slid gently to her feet, as well; she absently watched him stride towards the exit, recapping what alcohol was left. Its sloshing was overpowered by metal-enforced soles upon alloy floors. "Where are you going?"

"I'm not sure," he said, offhand, easy as though this should have been a normal post-shooting response. Safety lights slanted harshly, morphing the whites, blacks and defining red of Commander's armor into uniform aquamarine. Sheared-short hair looked bluer than it was auburn. Pale bronze skin glinted like ash.

"Get some sleep," she ordered.

Shepard's reaction didn't extend past a weak sound that couldn't even be qualified as a proper grunt. One suggestion barely heard did not keep her from making more.

"Get something to eat."

His final answer came in the form of a single meaningless nod. "Maybe later."

Chakwas frowned as the automatic door sucked away. She could see the unhinged buckle wink. She folded both arms.

"Shepard." A candid confession, military-grade, made in the cramped chamber between health and death. There was no offhand sentiment in war rooms or flag ship infirmaries. You didn't have time for it, and there was no real use. "Be careful. If there's more to be done, and I think you are right – the Alliance can't afford a need with no direction. Neither can _The Normandy_. We need you to survive this."

Janiah looked back at her – acknowledging, considering, paused. He was not one to lie or mince words into sugary comforts. Hailstone eyes dimmed in all the vacant space.

"I'll try," he said.

Perhaps she had always known about him – sighted and understood the stakes, unsaid conflict and decision to be more. From that first step onto _The Normandy_'s grates to the last one he would take out that faceless door, it was the way he had always been. There was more to see than formulas in Humanity's first Spectre. Some tick in his mind, some kernel that ancient warnings reacted to, made their need for him apparent. But an innate sensitivity to a dead race's bloody messages could not explain it all away. For as much as he was directed by protocol and staunch objectives – a creation of the salute and the precision gun – they, too, were directed by him. In him the clichés of wartime leaders collapsed, so many cheap images of champions bolstered by propaganda and brotherhood, by bellwether charisma and a martyr's charm. Shepard did not hold them tight like a fraternity glue. He stoked the momentum; he directed and refocused. He sharpened them all to a fine, deadly point. And you could trust that, when the time came, he'd throw that arrowhead – a burning stake to blind a prehistoric evil's eye.

Beyond the distinction of a Spectre's rank, Janiah Shepard was still human, and so his body may fracture and fail. His bullets might not prove strong or quick enough to puncture through. But one thing he had made reality, one code successfully achieved, one perfection met: Shepard was not allowed to miss.

"You should sleep, too, doctor. It won't be long before we reach the Pangaea Expanse," Commander told her, and he left.

Dr. Chakwas, alone again in this stock-still sick bay, straightened. She took a few minutes to mull, to be fatalistic, to think about pacing. She hefted the bottle in one nimble hand and looked at the opaque green distortion of her own face: tapering, fretful, slight. It was always older than Karin remembered. There were lines that reached deep. Grooves linked the familiar features, traced them decades back, hinted with the faintest ghosts of indentations at a future still to come. Maybe it was the exertion, maybe the gin, but she felt as though there were a hundred possibilities scattered through time, edges caught in this curved glass – a hundred soldiers who had expired too early beneath these firm, helping hands – a hundred projections of herself lived, living, yet to come.

Then the medic rubbed her face, and the instant was gone.

On a chuff – and, perhaps, a dare Karin had made to herself many times before – she took one last swig.

Maybe trying and _maybe later_ was enough.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Author's Note<em>: The old Chakwas chapter, centered on the ME2 resurrection, will also be restored; consider this a prelude in time. **


	4. MEMORIA: Parallel Lines

_**Author's Note**_**: Restored chapter with slight tweaks. (It might have been a small moment, but I was glad to finally learn Chakwas's name! I think it fits her.)**

**You can probably figure out what the "Memoria" series will contain. Yes, that's right… whereas "Dysphoria" follows Shepard memories, "Memoria" will consist of crew memories. Not predictable at all… nope. Ahem.**

**Thanks for reading!**

* * *

><p><strong>MEMORIA: Parallel Lines<strong>

_Less about leaving and more about staying.  
><em>– _Dr. Chakwas_

* * *

><p>Ten minutes out of an impact coma triggered by some fifty thousand-year-old ancient alien technology, and XO Shepard's primary concern: <em>"I'm hungry."<em>

Because there was no simply sitting down a two-hundred-plus pound space marine, Dr. Chakwas had ended up chasing him unhappily through the medical bay doors, across _SSV Normandy_'s cantina, and through her cramped pantry. Every corner of _SR-1 _was "cramped," honestly; each deck had been designed to fulfill compact prototype functions rather than the comfort of its inhabitance. This was particularly true in regards to the kitchens, though. At every quarter-turn, Janiah's overcrowded elbows nearly upended a package of military-grade provisions; the fretful surgeon was left ducking them, loaded syringe in hand, craning her neck to locate a vulnerable injection site. Even as she dodged a tin of canned vegetables, Karin realized the commando was not avoiding her – not exactly. Shepard had merely ascertained there were no gaping holes or lasting fractures in his body, and – as usual – that was apparently good enough for him.

And, to be rather unkindly straightforward, Chakwas really didn't mind this occasional disregard of his own wellbeing. Such a brazen lack of caution reflected an attitude typical of most young Alliance soldiers, who slung rifles with casual nonchalance towards the various injuries they might procure. It was common twenty-something male behavior. Truthfully, it was the only thing about him that was.

At a spry forty-eight (and very sleep-deprived), _The Normandy_'s medical chief didn't have enough spare energy for hounding him into a proper exam. She deftly rounded Janiah as he cranked open one poorly-marked cylinder of food – barely checking its contents before slopping processed soup into a bowl – wrenched up a bunched corner of athletic uniform shirt, and jabbed her needle beneath a floating rib. The defenseless patch of skin (a rare find on N7 commandos) poked inward without a fight. Antibiotics flooded his system sidelong. A tiny red dot now stared out upon tawny skin. He barely reacted, though; just a grunt, millimeter-deep dent in his brow, and one light crease wrinkling the broad bridge of Shepard's nose.

Successful, Chakwas capped the vial's smarting tip and chucked it into a nearby bio-waste receptacle. There was a catty look of contentment on her brittle features as she watched the commander wordlessly seat himself at an empty mess hall bench. It gave a dull, sullen _'thud' _beneath his weight.

"This would have been much easier on both of us if you'd have waited the fifteen more minutes I needed for a full examination," she noted – a crispy statement, made purely for the record. Janiah was blithely shoveling watery sustenance into his mouth. Carrots, celery, patchy strips of chicken. Cold. Karin did not think the man had any idea precisely what was leaking down into his stomach.

Then again, Dr. Chakwas had seen Shepard down stranger things when he entered this hazy mental state of _Other Things To Do_. Of course, starship executive officers almost always had two or three dozen other things to do at any given hour. The marine's dietary habits were hence somewhat sketchy due to convenience; rather than wasting valuable time with hot meals, this soldier was more inclined to swipe whatever was readily available. Tossing back vitamin supplements, trail mix, granola or wolfing miscellaneous jerky was faster than actually investing in genuine wholesome food. God, of all the ridiculous things, she had actually once seen him mindlessly scoop marmalade out of a jar. The oddball thought nearly made her laugh.

Externally, Commander Shepard handled stress incredibly well. Internally, Karin had her doubts.

She perched herself across from Janiah, seized his free arm without asking, and spread it flat upon the table. Two digits pushed down upon the wrist, just above that thick blue trio of veins. Her fingertips were cold.

"You're quite lucky to be alive, you know. There was really no telling how a Prothean beacon might react to human physiology." Chakwas did not think this fact really needed saying – but she did, anyway. The doctor raked an upset grey strand of hair back into submission and dutifully took inventory of their XO's pulse. "I could just as easily be scraping your burnt-out husk off the colony's shipping port. All things considered, we are rather fortunate it happened this way."

"It shouldn't have happened at all. Local marine got too close. Set it off," he explained. There was no real rancor in Shepard's level voice, a monotone passionlessness inspired by coming of age beneath strict military codes. Still, the doctor could detect a few loose bolts of irritation rooted there. His precise 'T's sounded especially sharp. (The ability to gloss over one's anger was critical for any ranking officer, naturally – but it was rather hard to dupe someone who currently held your heartbeat in their hands. Sure enough, she monitored a speed increase when he'd mentioned their recon troupe's planetside accident.)

Chakwas therefore took an innocent, infinitesimal sliver of pleasure at informing him thus: "Local Marine is onboard, actually. She and Lieutenant Alenko all but carried you into my workspace before I ushered them down to the barracks. Private Williams – in case you haven't caught her name – didn't want to leave. She claims you saved her life." Pine eyes shot a pointed, heckling glance towards the commander. Both geometric corners of his mouth tightened imperceptibly. This was the reaction Karin had been looking for. As a peace treaty, she released his captive limb. Janiah continued to stare down through his soup with a little less focused blindness and a little more frustration, however, as the information processed. The reflection of thin, boulder opal blue eyes turned yellowish and murky in the concoction. Defined cheekbones were lost in the mixture.

"Luck," Shepard said. The spoon clinked metal against large white teeth. "Right place. Right time. Rest of Eden Prime's 212 died in the first wave – tactical failure. They didn't keep formation. Geth scattered them. Williams was faster than the others. She would have reached the evacuation port if she hadn't touched the artifact."

"Be that as it may, I think Captain Anderson has taken something of a shine to her. You know how he is with eager, budding recruits. And as if that man needed any more encouragement… I also understand that Private Williams was somewhat fulsome in expressing her gratitude to our crew. To hear Joker tell it, at least." Chakwas spotted him squirm. She smiled, relaxed. "The gunnery chief has been highly concerned about you. Hovered over me; had to finally kick her out. She was very guilty."

"Jenkins died," Shepard said – simply – as though it was some sort of adequate explanation. His statement was like buckshot to the heart. Still, Karin did not lament very long. Their corporal, boyish and wide-eyed as he had been in life –_bless him_ – was still an enlisted marine. She was far too old to cry over snuffed-out young petty officers. But the woman's face aged suddenly, dramatically. Colorless overheads cast harsh light into the shallow gullies around her eyes and jaw. Birdlike bone structure slackened momentarily, not delicate but frail.

"Yes," she answered sadly, throat tight.

And that was that.

"How is your head?" Chakwas asked a moment later. He'd been bowed over an exam table and weakly cradling it less than a half-hour ago, complaining about throbbing, dizziness and a swollen tongue. Karin could find no source or suspicious test result save the intense brain wave activity during his bout of unconsciousness. She'd given him a light painkiller and full glass of water, waiting, watching for the obviously disturbed marine to return to himself. He'd sat there and nursed it slowly, saying nothing, looking pallor.

Until the soldier hopped up and marched out here, that is.

"It hurts," Shepard noted, but considered this. Broth glistened in the utensil cup, pausing a few inches from his mouth. "It's getting better."

"Your vision is, as well. I see your pupils have returned to normal size. And the swelling?"

"Going away."

"Don't bite your tongue," she warned. "I imagine you'll have a lot of talking to do when Captain Anderson comes for your reports."

He was quiet in a way that communicated fear – some knowledge, vague but vivid, that had been unshared. Two casualties, two officers he had barely known: poor Richard Jenkins and Nihlus, whose cracked skull plate must have signaled of a mission failed. The commander swallowed. Dr. Chakwas did not ask.

"You should really head downstairs and show them you've been revived," she chimed in, noting his bowl's sodium-packed contents were now below their halfway mark. The emotional recovery time of professional military personnel was remarkable by necessity. "Or at least show Lieutenant Alenko you're not a bloated corpse. This whole near-death mess has given him a terrible migraine. I'd have radioed myself, but I don't think he'd believe the news coming from me. While we're on the subject, however…" The surgeon reached into her lab coat's breast pocket, found nothing but a dry pen and lint, then searched a hip to discover what she'd sought.

Karin struggled with the medicine bottle's stuck plastic lid for twenty seconds before giving up and rolling her container to Shepard. He caught and popped the thing with one thumb, setting it upright between them. _'Damned arthritis,'_ she cursed, shaking two small pills into one palm. No thanks was exchanged. It wasn't needed by this point in their career. The doctor simply handed both capsules to their commander, folding his calloused fingers around them. "Take these to Kaidan, will you?"

Janiah issued her a nod. He picked up his bowl with one hand, tilted it back against a prominent bottom lip, and drained the remaining liquid.

"All right, then. I've given up on getting you back in an exam room any time today, and I suppose your bill of health is clean enough. You may go," she granted him, grinning, bowing chin to collarbone in an only slightly overblown gesture. "Don't forget to pardon Williams on your way out. She's obscenely apologetic."

Commander Shepard considered this, bronze forearms leant powerfully upon their booth's gleaning countertop, fluorescent bulbs strengthening the contrast that pressed upon every hard slant of his perpetually serious expression.

He would change so much in the coming years, she thought – and yet somehow had not changed at all.

"She's an idiot," he decided, stood up, then left Dr. Chakwas stewing in quiet amusement and her own self-satisfaction.

* * *

><p>That was how she had known, then, that this wasn't all some unforgivable and insidious lie plotted out by Cerberus hierarchs – that the largely silent man hunched over before her across the spotless table had not been some incredible lookalike, some cyborg proxy, some gross caricature of Janiah Montgomery Shepard. Sitting there, freshly-shaken from two bloody years of drug-induced slumber, he swallowed down lukewarm broth in spoonfuls and tasted the name <em>Miranda Lawson<em>.

"She's an idiot," Commander said, his tone exact – completely unconscious of what this curt dismissal had meant to her.

Then the Spectre stood up, dropped his silverware into a mess basin unconscious of its clatter, and departed for _Normandy SR-2_'s weapons lab as though no time had passed since that implausibly lucky day so very long ago. He had no idea how fitting it was. He had no idea how badly a seemingly weightless statement, when it had left the confines of his throat and formed words in midair, made Dr. Chakwas want to grab that insensate stone wall of human being by both ears and kiss him.

Déjà vu and "My god, Shepard – it really is you."


End file.
